Doubleclick,the Feds and Verant all seem to be in the same business. Doubleclick for obvious reasons, the Fed this week pumping the Bill S. 2092, which will give the federal government's ``trap and trace'' authority, and now Verant. Law enforcement and now mainstream business views the Fourth Amendment as the problem. That's the piece of the Bill of Rights that protects ``persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures''-- with no mention of data and what it represents. And so now, the corporations and the government want to force manufacturers to build surveillance into technology, all but eliminating another basic right of privacy.
This is just stupid. How in the world do they think this will help? Presumably to gain some attention (media) on DoS issues? Duh, didn't the Yahoo and others last month do this? Isn't there a more constructive way to get the point out the there is a real need to highten the attention relating to Information Security?
How does this combat DoS attacts by script kiddies? It doesn't. And we're on the wrong track.
Americans are exercising their unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of capital gains. But what happens when liberty jeopardizes life -- or the Dow Jones average? And what happens when the government jeopardizes liberty?
On Tuesday, Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., convened the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Technology, Terrorism and Government Information to make the case for new legislation to protect the nation's ``information infrastructure.'' And so began a familiar Washington ritual: Friendly lawmaker invites friendly bureaucrat to a hearing. Soon, a new law emerges that gives political credit to the lawmaker and a bigger budget to the bureaucrat. Kyl began the show with a declaration that ``denial of service'' hacker attacks on companies such as eBay, Yahoo and CNN should ``serve as a wake-up call about the need to protect our critical computer networks. the attacks contributed to a 258-point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and halted a string of three days of consecutive record- high closes of the technology-laden Nasdaq Composite Index.''
To deal with this problem, Kyl and Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., have co-sponsored S. 2092, which would modify the federal government's ``trap and trace'' authority, so that law enforcers would no longer need to obtain a search warrant in every jurisdiction through which a cyber- attack traveled. This just makes matters worse, the more we promote the "We must do something about those evil script kiddies" by staging stupid stunts like this blackout, it gives the govenment the green light to come on in, write bad policy and pay for the execution of this bad policy with our tax dollars.
The first ``witness'' was FBI Director Louis Freeh. After praising Kyl and his legislation, he reminded his audience of how much the FBI was already doing to combat the scourge of cyber-crime. Freeh then used the forum to outline the FBI's entire cyber-agenda, covering everyone from virus-writers and intellectual property thieves to the ``Internet Black Tigers,'' a group ``reportedly affiliated with the Tamil Tigers'' of Sri Lanka. He further noted that unchecked Net-related stock fraud costs investors $1 million an hour. IMM an hour? Sources say? BS. We're giving the feds all the confusion they need.
We need to get constructive folks, and not continue to feed the machine.
Agreed, but the line is grey and IMO, the only reason the DOJ went full steam on targeting M$ is because Gates didn''t donate to the democratic presidential campain. He didn't donate to the republicans or any other party either. This pissed off the democrats and around the same time the Netscape letter was getting some press, I guess Reno and Co. figured it would be a good vehicle to spank Gates.
(Yes, I am a high school student)
He, He, on/. all opinions are valid. I'm a PHB and no one seems to hold that against me.*Grin*
I agree with yoru analogy of Anti-Trust laws, however your example and how it relates to M$ are a little off. Fact is most car makers make parts exclusively for a single type of car, making you pay inflated costs for a fairly generic component. Look at taillights. GM has many,many different bulbs, all basically do the same thing, just with minor voltage and size differences. So, when you get a burned out bulb, you can't just get a new one from K-Mart, you must buy the uppriced one that fits the special socket for your make and model. Another example would be knobs for your heat and air controls. All do the same thing, all the backs are basically the same, 1/2 post. However all are cosmetically just a little different based on your make, model and year. To purchase a know for my Suburban it costs 22.50 US, just because the year is different that the others. Also it stifles competition because there is so much variety it isn't cost effective for aftermarket makers to make them, so GM gets to charge 22 bucks for a 20 cent part.
Essentially this is the same track M$ took, with the one exception that they strong armed folks like Dell and Compaq to use their products exclusively, which BTW I really don't see a problem with. If Dell and Compaq and the like didn't want to sign, they didn't have to. They made a choice to do business with M$ and then they cried "Unfair". To me they are just pissed the agreement they signed was more in Microsofts favor than theirs. Sour Grapes, they shouldn't have signed the contracts if they were opposed to the contratual relationships therein.
Thanks Rick, I agree, but only to a point. There is a very grey line on leveraging business and product strenghts against your competitors and partners weaknesses. In M$'s case, obviously the courts feel they have gone too far, however in the appeal they will be able to make a case that they were just using good marketing and sound business ethics to leverage their corporate strengths to gain the upper hand over their competition. Fairly simple approach, and quite logical. I make widget x with capital I receive from my shareholders, they in turn want me to do whatever I can to sell widget x to consumers and not have widget y purchesed by the other company. That is the reason they invest. In my view, I'm not defending M$, however they acted exactly as any other successfull company would have, including the ones that you and I work for. The name of the game is to increase marketshare and improve profits for your shareholders, they did just that, now they are being penalized for being successfull.
Oh I believe that they are sincere in the fact that they want to talk. If their motives are sincerely to help make their program better by honestly listening to the concerns, weighing the facts and moving in a positive direction, hats off to them.
However, if it is just a PR campaign, what better way to stifle the flames than to be able to publicly say we met face to face with folks like Slashdot reps, and want to make sure we do our homework to improve our program.
Either way, they win, the tactic is the same, one is based on honesty and truly wanting to do the right thing, one is based on keeping their name in the trades. I'm sure you will let us know how it falls out.
Although I do see much good in the programs base direction, I do feel that is is quite misguided. Many kids will be tagged as "Suspects" mearly because of the "Opeinion" of a peer. This just isn't enough, especially as AC.
To get the program to gain the support it would need to be a usefull tool in proactive efforts to reduce violence in the schools, maybe the first step should be to remove AC from the fold.
Also I admire Pinkerton or any other company putting it's money behind something in the community they feel strongly about. However, Pinkerton really doesn't have the ":Touchy feely, warm hugs" sort of reputation and overall I'm quite leary that this is nothing more that a big publicity stunt.
The American dream? Well, I guess we'd have to admit that if he hasn't acheived it, he's pretty close. As for "Doing it too well", I didn't realize that we had laws against being successfull at what we do. If there are laws against being successfull, and the American dream is generally (in your reference) about acheiving success, then it would be impossible to have the american dream. Mutually exclusive.
So now we have laws in the US against arrogance? We can penalize people and companies for being impolite, or do they need to be really big assholes? Does being egotistical count?
Just kidding actually, I like the AMD Intel reference, but hey are branching out into areas that are grey also. Let's remember that aside from the true blue connentation that monopoly laws were created to keep competition alive and robust, and to make things better for the average joe, A huge part of the influence on anti-monopoly laws was aimed squarely at the railroad barons and their companies by the government because the government was afraid they had too much power over the economy. The laws were put in place to protect the governments interests as well, not just the little guy.
Agreed, to a point. Are you stating that is is ok to be a monopoly, you just can't leverage it? or are you stating that it is monopolistic to be successfull in many facets of a particular industry?
In the decision, Jackson said Thecompany "mounted a deliberate assault on entrepreneurial efforts" that could have introduced technologies that competed with Microsoft's own technologies, and "placed an oppressive thumb on the scale of competitive fortune, thereby effectively guaranteeing its continued dominance in the relevant market."
Sounds like a profitable business plan to me. Isn't this what most businesses try to do in one form or another?
Interesting piece. However frankly I don't agree that there will be a Post Microsoft period. As one sided as this site is with regards to Microsoft, I think it would be foolish to believe that "The wicked witch is dead". Microsoft does have a customer base, and will continue to diversify making the public at large more and more dependent on their products. From smart houses and game consoles to news television and insurance, Microsoft has it's paws in everything. As well they should. Microsoft, for all Slashdot readers flames and finger pointing on the evil empire continually forget one important thing. Microsoft is in business to make money for their shareholders, they have always been in business for this reason and will continue to keep profit margins and revenue stream well ahead of culture driven policy and for that matter the justice department.
They will have the courts tied up for years with appeals and why Open Source advocates are rejoicing that the wicked witch is dead, Bill and Balmer and the gang are focusing on making more money with newer products and slick marketing. Unfortunately money is power and although the DOJ won this round but overall I don't believe it will really hurt Microsoft at all.
Now that we've done all the complaining about the law and the DCMA, next step is to get involved.Here's how, Constructive communication to the folks who can make a difference beats whining every time.
I like these shows, PBS generally does a good job, unlike the rest of hollywood with crap like the pirates of silicon valley. I had the opportunity to work on a project like this with the Discovery channel and a telecom doing a 1/2 hour peice on cracking and phreaking. All in all they did a good job for not being involved with the technology on a daily basis. I'll watch tonight when it shows in my area. I like the fact that in the primer on their web site, they speak to the open source model. Every little bit helps.
Lighten up a little. Sheesh. Give him/her some credit at least for being creative, and IMO, from reading the posts below, the parent post is a pretty accurate reference. If we try to mute everyones attempts at a little humor around here, the only thing we'll have is "I agree" and "flamebait" posts. Personally I thought it was funny, and in a somewhat stale "M$" is evil thread, a little humor breaks up the redundancy of it.
"VMware Ready to Run will allow customers to run Microsoft Windows as an additional operating system without any of the pain of an install,"
O.K., so you eliminate the pain of the Windows install. To me that's only the beginning of the pain, reguardless of. I wonder if it also eliminates the pain of reinstalling?
Although it is a step in the right direction, I honestly wonder how far they will go with it after the darwin effort is completed. I don't believe that we will see full blown MAC OS chugging along on Intel for the long haul. I don't see where the shift in platform fits in to Apples longer range plan. They have been making much headway lately with the flavors of the month and continuing to provide for the apple following, not no be a sad ass, but moving to full intel compatability just doesn't seem to fit into their business model which seems to be working pretty well for them. If it's not broken, don't fix it.
I remember that one. That would be cool. If I remember correctly the so called "experts" did agree that he was billy the kid. They compared old photographs of him, specifically the shape of his ear. The ruling was that the gentleman was William H. Bonnie and his estate was able to collect back benefits after he died. I never did beleive it. The "Experts" claimed that the shape of the cartilage in your ear is as foolproof as fingerprints and compairing photos of him in the 1940 time frame to older pic's they determined that the ear was the same.
The Patent Office issued a terse one-paragraph response to the Bezos letter, saying, "We believe the existing patent law works very well for all technologies."
The patent office just doesn't get it. Aside from the normal arguments, look at it this way. The US Patent Office views all patents, from new mechanical gizmos, new patterns on bricks and tiles, to software and it's implementation all as the same thing. Unfortunately they are not the same thing. Software implementations and the like are equivelant to me patenting the way I personally have the folks in my company use a screwdriver. Hold it wiith your fingers this way, turn it that way etc. The problem I feel, is in the implementation of the tools. Data is not as physical as a brick or a gizmo and therefore must be addressed by the US Patent Office differently, using an entirely different model. When data and technology software innovations are made, they must be handeled in a different way than a gizmo.
One is that I think beginning artists could be in it for the love of the medium, however the money is a close second,, and most aspiring bands I know want to make it big, have all the money and all that goes along with it, girls, cars, etc.
Second, I agree that forcing the big recording companies to compete is a good path, however leaving the "Solution" in their court is a sure fire way to have another DMCA style solution that in the end adds to the problem rather than correcting it because the big record companies are not in it to make music freely available, their goal is to make money for their stockholders, so any solution they come up with will have a huge slant in their favor.
Thanks, Well put. Please I didn't mean to infer that you were not a true open source supporter or not. My thought was only that from a business plan perspective that there will be a couple of rather large bumps in the road.
Interesting marketing problem however, could be fun to solve. Good luck if you take if forward, if you need a hand mail me.P. Regards, Ernie
But some artists are understandably worried about releasing music on the Net; people may not want to pay for a CD at all when they can copy it for free. But Stoba says he's been thinking about a system that collects payment for playback, not for purchase, an echo of Sumner's idea.
Interesting concept, however I don't think it will ever take off. For one there is not motivation to not use the latest warez that are out there to bypass whatever chargeback scheme is in place and also, Last I heard AC could use Napster and the like, just like everyone else. Unfortunately Stoba won't get much support for this flavor of solution because of the above two points, also if he pumps his ideas while waving the open source or copyleft sort of flag he will get bitten on the fact, he'll be making a cut off of every play as well. Too bad, a solution like this is interesting.
Slashdot Mirror
Doubleclick,the Feds and Verant all seem to be in the same business. Doubleclick for obvious reasons, the Fed this week pumping the Bill S. 2092, which will give the federal government's ``trap and trace'' authority, and now Verant. Law enforcement and now mainstream business views the Fourth Amendment as the problem. That's the piece of the Bill of Rights that protects ``persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures''-- with no mention of data and what it represents. And so now, the corporations and the government want to force manufacturers to build surveillance into technology, all but eliminating another basic right of privacy.
How does this combat DoS attacts by script kiddies? It doesn't. And we're on the wrong track.
Americans are exercising their unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of capital gains. But what happens when liberty jeopardizes life -- or the Dow Jones average? And what happens when the government jeopardizes liberty?
On Tuesday, Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., convened the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Technology, Terrorism and Government Information to make the case for new legislation to protect the nation's ``information infrastructure.'' And so began a familiar Washington ritual: Friendly lawmaker invites friendly bureaucrat to a hearing. Soon, a new law emerges that gives political credit to the lawmaker and a bigger budget to the bureaucrat. Kyl began the show with a declaration that ``denial of service'' hacker attacks on companies such as eBay, Yahoo and CNN should ``serve as a wake-up call about the need to protect our critical computer networks. the attacks contributed to a 258-point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and halted a string of three days of consecutive record- high closes of the technology-laden Nasdaq Composite Index.''
To deal with this problem, Kyl and Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., have co-sponsored S. 2092, which would modify the federal government's ``trap and trace'' authority, so that law enforcers would no longer need to obtain a search warrant in every jurisdiction through which a cyber- attack traveled. This just makes matters worse, the more we promote the "We must do something about those evil script kiddies" by staging stupid stunts like this blackout, it gives the govenment the green light to come on in, write bad policy and pay for the execution of this bad policy with our tax dollars.
The first ``witness'' was FBI Director Louis Freeh. After praising Kyl and his legislation, he reminded his audience of how much the FBI was already doing to combat the scourge of cyber-crime. Freeh then used the forum to outline the FBI's entire cyber-agenda, covering everyone from virus-writers and intellectual property thieves to the ``Internet Black Tigers,'' a group ``reportedly affiliated with the Tamil Tigers'' of Sri Lanka. He further noted that unchecked Net-related stock fraud costs investors $1 million an hour. IMM an hour? Sources say? BS. We're giving the feds all the confusion they need.
We need to get constructive folks, and not continue to feed the machine.
(Yes, I am a high school student)
He, He, on /. all opinions are valid. I'm a PHB and no one seems to hold that against me.*Grin*
Essentially this is the same track M$ took, with the one exception that they strong armed folks like Dell and Compaq to use their products exclusively, which BTW I really don't see a problem with. If Dell and Compaq and the like didn't want to sign, they didn't have to. They made a choice to do business with M$ and then they cried "Unfair". To me they are just pissed the agreement they signed was more in Microsofts favor than theirs. Sour Grapes, they shouldn't have signed the contracts if they were opposed to the contratual relationships therein.
Thanks Rick, I agree, but only to a point. There is a very grey line on leveraging business and product strenghts against your competitors and partners weaknesses. In M$'s case, obviously the courts feel they have gone too far, however in the appeal they will be able to make a case that they were just using good marketing and sound business ethics to leverage their corporate strengths to gain the upper hand over their competition. Fairly simple approach, and quite logical. I make widget x with capital I receive from my shareholders, they in turn want me to do whatever I can to sell widget x to consumers and not have widget y purchesed by the other company. That is the reason they invest. In my view, I'm not defending M$, however they acted exactly as any other successfull company would have, including the ones that you and I work for. The name of the game is to increase marketshare and improve profits for your shareholders, they did just that, now they are being penalized for being successfull.
However, if it is just a PR campaign, what better way to stifle the flames than to be able to publicly say we met face to face with folks like Slashdot reps, and want to make sure we do our homework to improve our program.
Either way, they win, the tactic is the same, one is based on honesty and truly wanting to do the right thing, one is based on keeping their name in the trades. I'm sure you will let us know how it falls out.
To get the program to gain the support it would need to be a usefull tool in proactive efforts to reduce violence in the schools, maybe the first step should be to remove AC from the fold.
Also I admire Pinkerton or any other company putting it's money behind something in the community they feel strongly about. However, Pinkerton really doesn't have the ":Touchy feely, warm hugs" sort of reputation and overall I'm quite leary that this is nothing more that a big publicity stunt.
BTW, I liked the review, but I thought it was sort of simplistic.
Just kidding actually, I like the AMD Intel reference, but hey are branching out into areas that are grey also. Let's remember that aside from the true blue connentation that monopoly laws were created to keep competition alive and robust, and to make things better for the average joe, A huge part of the influence on anti-monopoly laws was aimed squarely at the railroad barons and their companies by the government because the government was afraid they had too much power over the economy. The laws were put in place to protect the governments interests as well, not just the little guy.
Agreed, to a point. Are you stating that is is ok to be a monopoly, you just can't leverage it? or are you stating that it is monopolistic to be successfull in many facets of a particular industry?
Sounds like a profitable business plan to me. Isn't this what most businesses try to do in one form or another?
They will have the courts tied up for years with appeals and why Open Source advocates are rejoicing that the wicked witch is dead, Bill and Balmer and the gang are focusing on making more money with newer products and slick marketing. Unfortunately money is power and although the DOJ won this round but overall I don't believe it will really hurt Microsoft at all.
Now that we've done all the complaining about the law and the DCMA, next step is to get involved.Here's how, Constructive communication to the folks who can make a difference beats whining every time.
Electronic Frontier Foundation
US House of Representatives
US Senate
Global Internet Liberty Campaign (GILC)
Internet Free Expression Alliance (IFEA)
Digital Future Coalition (DFC)
TRUSTe Privacy Policy Certification Program
I like these shows, PBS generally does a good job, unlike the rest of hollywood with crap like the pirates of silicon valley. I had the opportunity to work on a project like this with the Discovery channel and a telecom doing a 1/2 hour peice on cracking and phreaking. All in all they did a good job for not being involved with the technology on a daily basis. I'll watch tonight when it shows in my area. I like the fact that in the primer on their web site, they speak to the open source model. Every little bit helps.
Can't be a tax, must be a fine, because, A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well.
Lighten up a little. Sheesh. Give him/her some credit at least for being creative, and IMO, from reading the posts below, the parent post is a pretty accurate reference. If we try to mute everyones attempts at a little humor around here, the only thing we'll have is "I agree" and "flamebait" posts. Personally I thought it was funny, and in a somewhat stale "M$" is evil thread, a little humor breaks up the redundancy of it.
O.K., so you eliminate the pain of the Windows install. To me that's only the beginning of the pain, reguardless of. I wonder if it also eliminates the pain of reinstalling?
Although it is a step in the right direction, I honestly wonder how far they will go with it after the darwin effort is completed. I don't believe that we will see full blown MAC OS chugging along on Intel for the long haul. I don't see where the shift in platform fits in to Apples longer range plan. They have been making much headway lately with the flavors of the month and continuing to provide for the apple following, not no be a sad ass, but moving to full intel compatability just doesn't seem to fit into their business model which seems to be working pretty well for them. If it's not broken, don't fix it.
I remember that one. That would be cool. If I remember correctly the so called "experts" did agree that he was billy the kid. They compared old photographs of him, specifically the shape of his ear. The ruling was that the gentleman was William H. Bonnie and his estate was able to collect back benefits after he died. I never did beleive it. The "Experts" claimed that the shape of the cartilage in your ear is as foolproof as fingerprints and compairing photos of him in the 1940 time frame to older pic's they determined that the ear was the same.
The patent office just doesn't get it. Aside from the normal arguments, look at it this way. The US Patent Office views all patents, from new mechanical gizmos, new patterns on bricks and tiles, to software and it's implementation all as the same thing. Unfortunately they are not the same thing. Software implementations and the like are equivelant to me patenting the way I personally have the folks in my company use a screwdriver. Hold it wiith your fingers this way, turn it that way etc. The problem I feel, is in the implementation of the tools. Data is not as physical as a brick or a gizmo and therefore must be addressed by the US Patent Office differently, using an entirely different model. When data and technology software innovations are made, they must be handeled in a different way than a gizmo.
One is that I think beginning artists could be in it for the love of the medium, however the money is a close second,, and most aspiring bands I know want to make it big, have all the money and all that goes along with it, girls, cars, etc.
Second, I agree that forcing the big recording companies to compete is a good path, however leaving the "Solution" in their court is a sure fire way to have another DMCA style solution that in the end adds to the problem rather than correcting it because the big record companies are not in it to make music freely available, their goal is to make money for their stockholders, so any solution they come up with will have a huge slant in their favor.
Interesting marketing problem however, could be fun to solve. Good luck if you take if forward, if you need a hand mail me.P. Regards, Ernie
Electronic Frontier Foundation
US House of Representatives
US Senate
Global Internet Liberty Campaign (GILC)
Internet Free Expression Alliance (IFEA)
Digital Future Coalition (DFC)
TRUSTe Privacy Policy Certification Program
Interesting concept, however I don't think it will ever take off. For one there is not motivation to not use the latest warez that are out there to bypass whatever chargeback scheme is in place and also, Last I heard AC could use Napster and the like, just like everyone else. Unfortunately Stoba won't get much support for this flavor of solution because of the above two points, also if he pumps his ideas while waving the open source or copyleft sort of flag he will get bitten on the fact, he'll be making a cut off of every play as well. Too bad, a solution like this is interesting.